While I know I could never make someone redundant personally, I do think the idea that you're owed a job at a company forever is wrong. As someone on the spectrum, it's not always been easy for me to find work, and I have been made redundant in a similar manner to this in the past which wasn't an enjoyable experience. Still, at the time all I could do was express my appreciation that for a few years that company wanted my services enough to pay me a decent wage and that I thoroughly enjoyed my time working for said company. I understood my job was a risk to the company going forward and I held no hard feelings about the decision made to let me go.
In a perfect world things like this wouldn't happen. Top employees would never leave for a better paying job, and you'd never have to let employees go to remain competitive. But this isn't a perfect world. We must prepare for the worst and hope for best while remembering to treat each other with as much respect, kindness, and understanding as possible.
Whether or not these specific cuts were needed or sensible, I don't know. What I do know is that Tesla is a young company in a highly competitive space. Were I personally to take a job at Tesla I wouldn't expect to be there longer than a year - especially if I was a temp worker or contractor. Anyone who's worked at small, early stage startup in the past would know how this story goes. You often work harder and longer than you would at a more established slower moving company, you don't get the perks, and you're constantly worrying about whether or not you'll have a job next month. But it can also be very rewarding when things go well. These are the decisions you must weigh up as an employee when looking for work.
I think for a company the size of Tesla it would actually be beneficial to have a well-organized worker council and union through which the employees could negotiate with the board of directors when things like this happen. Often this results in a better solution for everyone.
When the recession hit Germany in 2008 most large automotive companies were also faced with a massive decline in orders and were forced to aggressively cut costs. As employees in these companies are heavily unionized they of course protested against this and the worker council started negotiating with the board of directors. They found a solution by reducing the work hours for a large percentage of their workers (with an accompanied pay cut) instead of firing a smaller percentage of them, which allowed them to retain almost everyone and at the same time reduce costs. When the economy sped up again they were able to just increase the working hours again. This was great for the employees (as they didn't lose their jobs) but also for the companies, because they didn't have to find and train new employees after the crisis was over.
I'm wondering why Tesla isn't considering something like this as I imagine there's a lot of training involved in many jobs at their factory, and it's probably very costly to rehire and retrain new employees when the growth picks up again. Just my 2 cents.
One of the reasons why shortened work (Kurzarbeit) worked for Germany is that the government subsidizes it by paying the workers back some of their lost income, on the rationale that it's better to subsidize them for a short time rather than for them to become unemployed for a potentially long time.
The maximum duration of this Kurzarbeitergeld was gradually extended through the 2007-2009 crisis from 12 months up to 24 months.
Musk mentions in the letter that Tesla isn't able to provide a work-life balance on par with their competitors. I take that to mean that they expect you to work overtime. It probably isn't a good starting point for the sort of deal you describe.
Making everyone take a cut instead of firing the lowest performers in your company is a bad idea. It hurts your top performers, and makes it more likely they will leave. I've been through this during the bust and top performers leaving is guaranteed to happen if they know they're getting a pay cut.
> They found a solution by reducing the work hours for a large percentage of their workers (with an accompanied pay cut) instead of firing a smaller percentage of them, which allowed them to retain almost everyone and at the same time reduce costs.
More companies don't do this because it's not in labor's favor, in aggregate. Regardless of economic conditions, companies always have an interest in paying their workers less, as this cuts costs and improves profit margins. In aggregate, companies can't continually cut wages because workers would leave for employers who would pay them market rate, and so employers are forced to lay off employees to cut costs - precisely because, in a low-trust environment, it's the only way to convince labor that the cost cutting is actually necessary, because the layoff hurts the company too by way of lost productivity. The upwards pressure is called "sticky wages", and it's one of the reasons why economies need at least a small amount of inflation to be healthy.
German auto manufacturers could do it because a) they have much better labor relations on the ground and b) the 2008 recession was a real phenomenon that everyone knew about. Their trust allowed them to come to a more ideal solution, but for most companies around the world, real people and realpolitik get in the way of the ideal solution.
This is a very German solution. A British union would have rather destroyed the company with a series of strikes ultimately costing everyone their jobs. That is why unions have a very bad reputation, but it’s not inherent to all unions, that’s what people don’t understand. It’s just specific to the UK, and that’s why we don’t have a domestic car industry anymore.
If we ever unionised in tech it would have to be along German lines.
I’m wondering why Tesla isn’t considering something like this
I’m thinking it’s because they aren’t firing people at random. They’re letting go their weakest performers. This is very common and has been encouraged in business for decades:
Kinda off topic, but I'm interested in learning more about your struggle to find work due to being on the spectrum. My team recently had someone with autism join us and beforehand we had a mini workshop where we learned about autism in general, and the challenges faced in the workplace by people with autism. The one fact that really stood out to me was that the majority of autistic people are unable to find full time employment.
I'm usually a lurker on HN and don't see a way to send a private message, but if you're up for it, I'd love to exchange emails and learn more about your personal journey and challenges.
Keeping some people even if they're "redundant" for some time can also be considered an investment in your workforce. You keep those people's experience so when activity go back up they're already there. And if you demonstrate some loyalty to your people you may get some in return.
> I do think the idea that you're owed a job at a company forever is wrong.
Forever, sure that is wrong. However, there is some expectation of constancy. Simply because people tend to make choices based on the status quo.
What makes things worse is that signaling that lay-offs are coming, either for specific people or in general, really harms productivity. This is because people start infighting and lose morale.
Hence, companies have reasons to announce these things late. This means it becomes harder to trust statements by employers about job security.
I was an early investor in Tesla (I cashed out a few years ago). I believe in their mission. I wish their success.
But this is hard, simultaneously telling your workforce:
1) We need to you work harder, better, and faster.
2) To help you achieve this, we will be reducing your headcount (and thus resources) by 7%.
3) By the way, if you fail, the company fails.
…But keep your heads up, it's for the planet! At some point these thousands of folks that remain are going to start asking "Is it worth it?" That coupled with legitimate competition from their "entrenched" competitors, 2019 looks to be a very difficult year for Tesla.
I still hope they succeed; I just hope the real, human costs are worth it.
I don't believe Tesla will do any good for the planet overall. The only way we can do good is if we sell less individual cars, not more, whether electric or not. Nowhere in Tesla's vision can I see a plan for more electric buses and trains. The USA desperately need a viable train network for the 21st century.
It sure seems like Tesla is the foremost reason car manufacturers have started to fully acknowledge electric is the near(& medium/long term)-future and not just some check box/compliance car to satisfy "well meaning bureaucrats".
Existing European/Japanese/US car manufacturers were happy enough to trundle along with existing ICE cars as it required less effort & gave better profits.
They & Chinese (electric) car/bus makers are the reason our planet is going to improve - ~0 air pollution in populated areas and massive reduction in nuisance engine noises.
They already did good for the planet (as well as humanity).
Any time somebody already planned to replace their car and chooses electric over ICE is a win for the planet. It's also a health improvement for humans living in urban environments.
Tesla might not be selling that many cars, but they are the major reason why established brands like Volkswagen feel pressure to "catch up" and massively invest in new EV lineups. Once those companies have caught up in terms of technology and lineup they will massively outsell anything Tesla is capable of, helping reduce our impact on the climate and our health.
Of course public transport would be even better, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good
You're not entirely wrong, but that's still a cynical point of view. Electric cars are a huge win over combustion and don't require us to rebuild the infrastructure of the entire world. Just saying "it won't save the world, so it sucks" is the wrong attitude. It's an improvement. And we're going to need a lot of improvements to add up while we work towards a moon shot solution that may not appear for 50 or 100 years.
Tesla's full vision of self-driving cars that form a ridesharing network would indeed dramatically reduce the number of cars. Most cars sit around unused, taking up space. When idle time for cars drops, then demand for cars will drop.
This also means we'll have much less need for parking lots, etc. Parking infrastructure consumes a huge portion of prime urban land. Curbside parking alone is sometimes estimated at 10%.
Thus, it would also reduce sprawl, and thereby reduce both commute times and the amount of energy required to commute.
All of those things would be eco-friendly, if we can move in that direction. Particularly once we shut down all the coal plants.
With even a glance at the public transport statement in other countries it becomes clear to me that trains and buses have minimal utility to the swaths of Americans (and Canadians, as well as possibly others) living in sparsely populated suburbs. Most homes in the suburbs and exurbs are about as accessible to a viable train or bus stop as homes in villages in a place like Switzerland, where I currently live. It simply doesn't make sense to have bus stops within a walkable distance (which is necessary for people to transition entirely to public transit) if far fewer people live around each bus stop. In a select few US cities, it works well enough, but many cities and nearly all suburbs are simply not practical cases for buses and trains without other assistive modes of transit.
Electric scooters and e-bikes provide hope of fixing this last mile problem, but they're not yet universal enough.
I think we should laud Tesla and other similar companies for providing a no-compromises solution that results in immediate positive effects on the environment.
Removing the need for every household to have their own dedicated car is part of Tesla's vision. Elon has referred to self-driving functionality as a "shared electric autonomy".
Your comment requires readers to dive head-first into the train fantasy myth, which has been debunked numerous times. Trains will not happen in the very sparsely populated USA, from Amtrak to NYC to Cali high speed rail, we are seeing evidence that trains are extremely hard to accomplish even in high-density areas. We must move forward amazingly fast for climate change if we are to avoid trillions in damage, and we simply can not do so if we don't include massive amounts of batteries into our energy system.
On cars, I agree with you, people are very irrational when it comes to cars. I'd be in favor of a massive vehicle miles traveled tax, to repair our roads and to tax emissions from transit. But the simple fact is people love being in their own car and there's no other viable option for most people.
Furthermore, even if you magic a train system into existence, you still don't solve the battery/energy storage situation with trains (which will never have the will or funding or political backing to ever be built, as we are seeing over and over). Without batteries or nuclear (another two train-like near-impossible task), we'll still need natural gas peakers, and we won't solve climate change. Batteries are the only area we're moving forward, and that's why Tesla is doing amazing good for the planet.
the onus can't be on Tesla to save the world. They're doing their part, we need more companies who aim for good instead of profits. The only way incumbent companies will change is through market pressure. Tesla's doing that for cars, but who's doing it for other forms of manufacturing? And who's pressuring town and city governance to improve public transport and urban planning? There's movements springing up to improve public transit through activism (like https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/05/meet-the-numt...) but companies who exist to make markets green will be essential.
That's what Uber is working at. Seriously though - taxi prices and usability before the advent of taxi app were nowhere near the level that would allow me or my peers to regularly take a cab from home to work. Now it's trivial.
The US has the largest rail network in the world [1]. Its used for freight, not passengers, which is a more sensible use since rail can more large amounts of heavy stuff cheaply. Moving a few passengers at high speed is extremely expensive, and better done by aircraft or autonomous cars.
Tesla is doing the best for planet Earth of any company on the planet. Without them we would not be seeing traditional autos move away from fossil fuel vehicles - the margins and established knowledge would have been too good to just abandon it.
I think I'm about to say something that might be met with displeasure but I feel like it's a question I'd like to toss around anyways:
Is there really anything that bad about this message to the workforce? I feel like 95% of what was said is implied at other places and when that's the reality but it's never spoken of it would probably create an even higher level of anxiety? Maybe the more extended life of bigger and more dug in companies offer some sort of incentives or worker's rights that alleviate some of those anxieties?
I guess I feel like what's being said isn't surprising nor is it that remarkable, to me. What would be surprising or remarkable is if the message was: You don't have to work so hard, we're hiring 7% more people because we feel like it's a nice thing to do and regardless of our performance the failures of this company or the products we make will never be your (the workers) fault.
I'm sure everything I just said is stupid but, even if the message from Tesla rubs people the wrong way I somehow feel like the harsh truth might just be an OK pill to swallow compared to the, "Aren't you going at least buy me dinner before you... " type message / ethos that I see and have felt in corporate environments for decades?
The harsh truth is that the company is offering a particular compensation package for a particular expectation of work. If an employee doesn’t like the trade, he can and should leave. That’s not what the letter says. It pretends that we are all in this together to save the world.
> Is there really anything that bad about this message to the workforce?
No—there's nothing wrong with it. The results might be bad, though.
2019 will be hard for Tesla and its workforce. When things are hard, people start asking the question "Is it worth it?"
This could very well have been the very best way to handle the business necessity of reducing the workforce by 7%; it just might have some bad consequences that were unavoidable when the available business options are: be unprofitable or layoff workers.
My comment was aimed at the realities (2019 will be hard for Tesla and employees)—not a moral comment on the action of laying off people.
Having seen layoffs in my own company, and having survived them myself, what I found in our case was that as important as they were, the impact was significantly more negative than if things had continued the way they were. To put more perspective, the company was very profitable but had bad margins. The only thing the lay-off managed was a short term increase in margins, followed by years of stalled growth because immediately after the layoffs the best people quit as soon as they found another opportunity, and being the best people, they found opportunities extremely easily. I suspect the margin improvement was less than the lost profits at the older lower margins due to the stalled growth (the company had been growing rapidly before. Arguably, that’s why it became bloated).
I am curious if there is a better way to right size a company after it has become more bloated than it needs to be than a blunt instrument like layoffs.
The other reality for a lot of people is going to a established company that has an admirable mission, but doesn't actually take it seriously and is more for appearing like a force for good than actually doing good. Same could be argued for Tesla, but it doesn't make Tesla unique in any case. They are putting out the product they said was the change needed and they have.
In a very cynical way, I've always loved when a company tells it's employees "Last year was our best", and then follows it up with "By the way, you're all taking a haircut"
Reading this I ask myself why does one chooses to work in such a work environment? Are people working there doing it because they feel they're part of a bigger dream? Seems to me like it's very hard to feel this way when you're so replaceable. At the end of the day I guess the work is similar to working in many other car brands, just harder, more hectic and managed more poorly. Are there any special benefits that I'm missing? (I'm really wondering, not trying to put anyone down)
I'm on team humanity. In spite all our failings, I want humanity to succeed and reach for the stars. Success means having a livable planet. For idealists like me who are also realists, the only way to get everyone working toward this future is to put it in their self-interest. Anything else just. won't. work.
To dedicate yourself in a practical way to the future of humanity, Tesla's one of the few games around.
EVs don't solve the CO2 footprint of cars, the improvement is too small. We must drastically reduce the low-occupancy car miles driven and reverse the car growth trend in developing countries.
I applaud your ideals and attitude. I shared a similar ideals and attitude as well. But I also feel that a for-profit company is not doing our planet and humanity any favours if making a profit is priority number one. At least that is the message I am getting when I read the company update.
I would be drawn by a combination of the challenge of high expectations, and the fact that the company works towards a meaningful cause. Of course, there's a huge difference between the challenge being innovating all the time and straining your cognitive and physical abilities, and the challenge of trying to keep your partner and have some semblance of a personal life despite working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. It seems like Tesla PR implies the former, but the reality is the latter. If reports are to be believed, the company structure and management is still very much a Taylorian command-and-control hierarchy which is a huge barrier to real innovation.
I think fulfillment is a big part of it. Knowing that your work actually means something, that you're not just making people click more of your companies manipulating & intrusive ads and that you're not just implementing a done ad nauseam CRUD app or whatever, but instead contributing to something new & potentially revolutionizing can be a big incentive.
Used to know a guy: brilliant young man, excelling in the fields of physics and mathematics, and not a slouch in many others – at an amateur level driven by curiousity, but with an intelligence base nevertheless.
He had an older brother, who was, by the younger brother's own admission, a notch above himself in the intelligence department. The older brother was said to have been bored working at Google.
My suspicion is: someone in dire need of intellectual engagement might want to work at Tesla simply because of the opportunity to exercise one's mental capacity in a challenge of equivalent magnitude. (Not Tesla specifically: I suspect any company with similarly-driven heavily-pushed technical production would suffice, for a person with the knowledge of that sphere.)
Imagine Einstein or Hawking sorting paper in an office. How do you think their minds would feel in such an uncreative, unproductive environment? I'd wager they'd suffocate soon without an opportunity to express their intellect in a meaningful way. Same story, I suspect, happens with the brilliant engineers and designers at Tesla.
(Which isn't to say that the nightmare-ish conditions they're being put through are necessarily worth it, or that they can't find an outlet for their capacities elsewhere. Working for a company is simpler, in that one doesn't need to make as many choices as an independent entrepreneur would have to. It's also prestigious – since the company has a big name – which may or may not play its role.)
> Imagine Einstein or Hawking sorting paper in an office. How do you think their minds would feel in such an uncreative, unproductive environment?
Einstein is the perfect counterexample: Had he not worked at a boring paperwork job in the patent office, he wouldn't have had enough mental capacity to devise his theories.
> My suspicion is: someone in dire need of intellectual engagement might want to work at Tesla simply because of the opportunity to exercise one's mental capacity in a challenge of equivalent magnitude. (Not Tesla specifically: I suspect any company with similarly-driven heavily-pushed technical production would suffice, for a person with the knowledge of that sphere.)
I feel like you're over selling this by a lot, especially the Hawkings and paper comparison. Someone moving from Google to Tesla because of "boredom" is likely due to the industry more than the intellectual challenge. People go to work at Tesla because they believe in Musk's "vision" of a better world.
Remember things like this when you’re thinking of leaving your job for greener pastures and want to stay out of a sense of loyalty. Your company is not loyal to you and that we drop you the second you’re no longer useful to them.
Because the inverse seldom seems to be true. Employees are usually expected to be loyal to the corporate cause (or at least give some appearance of loyalty).
During one assessment many years ago I was accused of not being sufficiently "loyal", and I (ah, youth!) responded, "You want loyalty? Get a dog."
Needless to say it didn't go well for a little while until a higher-up manager squashed the whole thing because he agreed with my point of view.
There are ways to cut costs without layoffs and some companies choose to go that route. I think the point you are trying to make is that your employer will need to do what’s necessary to remain solvent. But that doesn’t automatically mean layoffs.
For example:
“We have a very skilled and competent work force and the last thing we want to do is lose them when we’re assuming this economy is going to come back,” said Craig Reider
Because most of those companies ask you for things in return that only a loyal person would do, like "work overtime with little or no OT pay" and stuff like that.
These cuts seem much more like an unplanned event and an indication of things not going according to plan than the cuts in the middle of last year. Those seemed like a good way to readjust to the realities of high volume production and get rid of redundancies.
I wonder in which areas of production they've experienced slower progress than what they'd anticipated last year.
Cutting the worst 7% of your workforce isn’t a terrible outcome. With that much hiring you are bound to find some employees that aren’t as good as others.
When you announce you're doing significant cuts and that you hope, maybe, to get a tiny profit for next quarter, and then after that things will be even worse, I think you're also going to lose some of the best of you workforce, as they'll start looking around.
Normally layoffs are viewed as positive or neutral event, but this paragraph -- " In Q4, preliminary, unaudited results indicate that we again made a GAAP profit, but less than Q3. This quarter, as with Q3, shipment of higher priced Model 3 variants (this time to Europe and Asia) will hopefully allow us, with great difficulty, effort and some luck, to target a tiny profit" does not instill much confidence, I guess.
Layoffs are viewed as positive for companies with a declining business (or at least on the bad part of the cycle). But when the company is growing and the stock is close to the all time high they are not so understandable.
It is not much of a problem if Q4 is better than Q4 of the previous year. That is actually a more meaningful comparison than Q3 to Q4, each quarter will be affected by different issues (end of financial year, college opening, winter, summer etc) whereas across years, the influences on each quarter are similar.
It’s because the financial pressure is increasing. High margin car demand is going to come down. Tesla made a small profit on those. Now comes the low margin cars. If Tesla wants to be profitable on those, costs will need to be cut.
If you are experienced with media messages enough, you always start reading such messages from the end. I most cases introduction is totally meaningless and is used to make the message polite.
Readit News
In a perfect world things like this wouldn't happen. Top employees would never leave for a better paying job, and you'd never have to let employees go to remain competitive. But this isn't a perfect world. We must prepare for the worst and hope for best while remembering to treat each other with as much respect, kindness, and understanding as possible.
Whether or not these specific cuts were needed or sensible, I don't know. What I do know is that Tesla is a young company in a highly competitive space. Were I personally to take a job at Tesla I wouldn't expect to be there longer than a year - especially if I was a temp worker or contractor. Anyone who's worked at small, early stage startup in the past would know how this story goes. You often work harder and longer than you would at a more established slower moving company, you don't get the perks, and you're constantly worrying about whether or not you'll have a job next month. But it can also be very rewarding when things go well. These are the decisions you must weigh up as an employee when looking for work.
When the recession hit Germany in 2008 most large automotive companies were also faced with a massive decline in orders and were forced to aggressively cut costs. As employees in these companies are heavily unionized they of course protested against this and the worker council started negotiating with the board of directors. They found a solution by reducing the work hours for a large percentage of their workers (with an accompanied pay cut) instead of firing a smaller percentage of them, which allowed them to retain almost everyone and at the same time reduce costs. When the economy sped up again they were able to just increase the working hours again. This was great for the employees (as they didn't lose their jobs) but also for the companies, because they didn't have to find and train new employees after the crisis was over.
I'm wondering why Tesla isn't considering something like this as I imagine there's a lot of training involved in many jobs at their factory, and it's probably very costly to rehire and retrain new employees when the growth picks up again. Just my 2 cents.
The maximum duration of this Kurzarbeitergeld was gradually extended through the 2007-2009 crisis from 12 months up to 24 months.
More companies don't do this because it's not in labor's favor, in aggregate. Regardless of economic conditions, companies always have an interest in paying their workers less, as this cuts costs and improves profit margins. In aggregate, companies can't continually cut wages because workers would leave for employers who would pay them market rate, and so employers are forced to lay off employees to cut costs - precisely because, in a low-trust environment, it's the only way to convince labor that the cost cutting is actually necessary, because the layoff hurts the company too by way of lost productivity. The upwards pressure is called "sticky wages", and it's one of the reasons why economies need at least a small amount of inflation to be healthy.
German auto manufacturers could do it because a) they have much better labor relations on the ground and b) the 2008 recession was a real phenomenon that everyone knew about. Their trust allowed them to come to a more ideal solution, but for most companies around the world, real people and realpolitik get in the way of the ideal solution.
If we ever unionised in tech it would have to be along German lines.
I’m thinking it’s because they aren’t firing people at random. They’re letting go their weakest performers. This is very common and has been encouraged in business for decades:
https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-...
I'm usually a lurker on HN and don't see a way to send a private message, but if you're up for it, I'd love to exchange emails and learn more about your personal journey and challenges.
Forever, sure that is wrong. However, there is some expectation of constancy. Simply because people tend to make choices based on the status quo.
What makes things worse is that signaling that lay-offs are coming, either for specific people or in general, really harms productivity. This is because people start infighting and lose morale.
Hence, companies have reasons to announce these things late. This means it becomes harder to trust statements by employers about job security.
When firing happens, this distrust is amplified.
But this is hard, simultaneously telling your workforce:
…But keep your heads up, it's for the planet! At some point these thousands of folks that remain are going to start asking "Is it worth it?" That coupled with legitimate competition from their "entrenched" competitors, 2019 looks to be a very difficult year for Tesla.I still hope they succeed; I just hope the real, human costs are worth it.
Existing European/Japanese/US car manufacturers were happy enough to trundle along with existing ICE cars as it required less effort & gave better profits.
They & Chinese (electric) car/bus makers are the reason our planet is going to improve - ~0 air pollution in populated areas and massive reduction in nuisance engine noises.
Any time somebody already planned to replace their car and chooses electric over ICE is a win for the planet. It's also a health improvement for humans living in urban environments.
Tesla might not be selling that many cars, but they are the major reason why established brands like Volkswagen feel pressure to "catch up" and massively invest in new EV lineups. Once those companies have caught up in terms of technology and lineup they will massively outsell anything Tesla is capable of, helping reduce our impact on the climate and our health.
Of course public transport would be even better, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good
This also means we'll have much less need for parking lots, etc. Parking infrastructure consumes a huge portion of prime urban land. Curbside parking alone is sometimes estimated at 10%.
Thus, it would also reduce sprawl, and thereby reduce both commute times and the amount of energy required to commute.
All of those things would be eco-friendly, if we can move in that direction. Particularly once we shut down all the coal plants.
Electric scooters and e-bikes provide hope of fixing this last mile problem, but they're not yet universal enough.
I think we should laud Tesla and other similar companies for providing a no-compromises solution that results in immediate positive effects on the environment.
https://electrek.co/2018/10/25/tesla-network-elon-musk-compe...
On cars, I agree with you, people are very irrational when it comes to cars. I'd be in favor of a massive vehicle miles traveled tax, to repair our roads and to tax emissions from transit. But the simple fact is people love being in their own car and there's no other viable option for most people.
Furthermore, even if you magic a train system into existence, you still don't solve the battery/energy storage situation with trains (which will never have the will or funding or political backing to ever be built, as we are seeing over and over). Without batteries or nuclear (another two train-like near-impossible task), we'll still need natural gas peakers, and we won't solve climate change. Batteries are the only area we're moving forward, and that's why Tesla is doing amazing good for the planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...
Tesla is doing the best for planet Earth of any company on the planet. Without them we would not be seeing traditional autos move away from fossil fuel vehicles - the margins and established knowledge would have been too good to just abandon it.
Obviously, you have a sound argument(s) to support your claim, right?
Is there really anything that bad about this message to the workforce? I feel like 95% of what was said is implied at other places and when that's the reality but it's never spoken of it would probably create an even higher level of anxiety? Maybe the more extended life of bigger and more dug in companies offer some sort of incentives or worker's rights that alleviate some of those anxieties?
I guess I feel like what's being said isn't surprising nor is it that remarkable, to me. What would be surprising or remarkable is if the message was: You don't have to work so hard, we're hiring 7% more people because we feel like it's a nice thing to do and regardless of our performance the failures of this company or the products we make will never be your (the workers) fault.
I'm sure everything I just said is stupid but, even if the message from Tesla rubs people the wrong way I somehow feel like the harsh truth might just be an OK pill to swallow compared to the, "Aren't you going at least buy me dinner before you... " type message / ethos that I see and have felt in corporate environments for decades?
No—there's nothing wrong with it. The results might be bad, though.
2019 will be hard for Tesla and its workforce. When things are hard, people start asking the question "Is it worth it?"
This could very well have been the very best way to handle the business necessity of reducing the workforce by 7%; it just might have some bad consequences that were unavoidable when the available business options are: be unprofitable or layoff workers.
My comment was aimed at the realities (2019 will be hard for Tesla and employees)—not a moral comment on the action of laying off people.
I am curious if there is a better way to right size a company after it has become more bloated than it needs to be than a blunt instrument like layoffs.
I'm on team humanity. In spite all our failings, I want humanity to succeed and reach for the stars. Success means having a livable planet. For idealists like me who are also realists, the only way to get everyone working toward this future is to put it in their self-interest. Anything else just. won't. work.
To dedicate yourself in a practical way to the future of humanity, Tesla's one of the few games around.
He had an older brother, who was, by the younger brother's own admission, a notch above himself in the intelligence department. The older brother was said to have been bored working at Google.
My suspicion is: someone in dire need of intellectual engagement might want to work at Tesla simply because of the opportunity to exercise one's mental capacity in a challenge of equivalent magnitude. (Not Tesla specifically: I suspect any company with similarly-driven heavily-pushed technical production would suffice, for a person with the knowledge of that sphere.)
Imagine Einstein or Hawking sorting paper in an office. How do you think their minds would feel in such an uncreative, unproductive environment? I'd wager they'd suffocate soon without an opportunity to express their intellect in a meaningful way. Same story, I suspect, happens with the brilliant engineers and designers at Tesla.
(Which isn't to say that the nightmare-ish conditions they're being put through are necessarily worth it, or that they can't find an outlet for their capacities elsewhere. Working for a company is simpler, in that one doesn't need to make as many choices as an independent entrepreneur would have to. It's also prestigious – since the company has a big name – which may or may not play its role.)
Einstein is the perfect counterexample: Had he not worked at a boring paperwork job in the patent office, he wouldn't have had enough mental capacity to devise his theories.
I feel like you're over selling this by a lot, especially the Hawkings and paper comparison. Someone moving from Google to Tesla because of "boredom" is likely due to the industry more than the intellectual challenge. People go to work at Tesla because they believe in Musk's "vision" of a better world.
Of course it will.
Why would/should/could it do any differently?
During one assessment many years ago I was accused of not being sufficiently "loyal", and I (ah, youth!) responded, "You want loyalty? Get a dog."
Needless to say it didn't go well for a little while until a higher-up manager squashed the whole thing because he agreed with my point of view.
For example:
“We have a very skilled and competent work force and the last thing we want to do is lose them when we’re assuming this economy is going to come back,” said Craig Reider
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/business/22layoffs.html
I wonder in which areas of production they've experienced slower progress than what they'd anticipated last year.
Normally layoffs are viewed as positive or neutral event, but this paragraph -- " In Q4, preliminary, unaudited results indicate that we again made a GAAP profit, but less than Q3. This quarter, as with Q3, shipment of higher priced Model 3 variants (this time to Europe and Asia) will hopefully allow us, with great difficulty, effort and some luck, to target a tiny profit" does not instill much confidence, I guess.
It entered at -8% at opening and now it´s about at -10%.
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"As a result of the above, we unfortunately have no choice but to reduce full-time employee headcount by approximately 7%"